Ele/War/Rdruid? 5.4 Good comp/Bad comp?

Not sure the name of the comp believe it is called ThunderCleave but I am more than likely wrong and I also would imagine that a Disc priest would be a better healer for the comp but would Ele/Arms/Rdruid be a viable and strong comp come 5.4?

Eh hard to predict future patches, too many changes are still possible. I probably wouldn't run it though to be honest, I'd replace the Warrior with a Mage or Warlock probably. But, really, any comp will work decently it just depends what your goal is. Will you get rank 1? No, absolutely not. Can you break 2k? Yeah, you can do that with most comps.

Eh hard to predict future patches, too many changes are still possible. I probably wouldn't run it though to be honest, I'd replace the Warrior with a Mage or Warlock probably. But, really, any comp will work decently it just depends what your goal is. Will you get rank 1? No, absolutely not. Can you break 2k? Yeah, you can do that with most comps.

If the 5.4 changes go live rDruid will be the best healer by an insane margin.

Eh hard to predict future patches, too many changes are still possible. I probably wouldn't run it though to be honest, I'd replace the Warrior with a Mage or Warlock probably. But, really, any comp will work decently it just depends what your goal is. Will you get rank 1? No, absolutely not. Can you break 2k? Yeah, you can do that with most comps.

it's not that hard to predict this comp won't be fantastic, actually. which i guess you have here.

lock ele x is going to be absolute bananas next patch, promise! have the warr reroll .

Not sure the name of the comp believe it is called ThunderCleave but I am more than likely wrong and I also would imagine that a Disc priest would be a better healer for the comp but would Ele/Arms/Rdruid be a viable and strong comp come 5.4?

The short answer is yes. I'm playing this comp atm but with a Holy Priest healer, which is arguably a weaker variant of the comp, and we're doing very well. We just played some more games today and farmed an ex-rank 1 team with 2 of 3 of us on alt classes (we're 2300 mmr, they were 2500 mmr with 80% w/l).

The comp is amazing for killing healers (apart from disc priests) and has amazing constant damage. It's a really fun comp for swaps too, and plays a lot like RPS/RPD if you've played that - but instead of waiting for 3 orbs you're waiting for charge/shockwave and a lava burst proc.

Unless Elementals get nerfed in 5.4 (which they should, but aren't) the comp will stay strong and with Resto Druid buffs incoming the comp will be extremely strong.

The short answer is yes. I'm playing this comp atm but with a Holy Priest healer, which is arguably a weaker variant of the comp, and we're doing very well. We just played some more games today and farmed an ex-rank 1 team with 2 of 3 of us on alt classes (we're 2300 mmr, they were 2500 mmr with 80% w/l).

The comp is amazing for killing healers (apart from disc priests) and has amazing constant damage. It's a really fun comp for swaps too, and plays a lot like RPS/RPD if you've played that - but instead of waiting for 3 orbs you're waiting for charge/shockwave and a lava burst proc.

Unless Elementals get nerfed in 5.4 (which they should, but aren't) the comp will stay strong and with Resto Druid buffs incoming the comp will be extremely strong.

The short answer is yes. I'm playing this comp atm but with a Holy Priest healer, which is arguably a weaker variant of the comp, and we're doing very well. We just played some more games today and farmed an ex-rank 1 team with 2 of 3 of us on alt classes (we're 2300 mmr, they were 2500 mmr with 80% w/l).

The comp is amazing for killing healers (apart from disc priests) and has amazing constant damage. It's a really fun comp for swaps too, and plays a lot like RPS/RPD if you've played that - but instead of waiting for 3 orbs you're waiting for charge/shockwave and a lava burst proc.

Unless Elementals get nerfed in 5.4 (which they should, but aren't) the comp will stay strong and with Resto Druid buffs incoming the comp will be extremely strong.

As an Ele, how are you maintaining your damage without dispel protection on your Flame Shock? And how do you typically land a kill seeing as you don't have too much in the way of CC, compared to LSD or any other Ele comp?

Oh, a few more questions if you don't mind, Snuggli.

1. Why totemic restoration instead of projection?
2. Why Echo in it's RNGish state instead of EM or AS (which i prefer) as being more reliable. I'm so dependent on having the option to AS+Hex or that I don't know what i'd do without it.
3. Finally, how often, if ever, do you rotate out with Cap Totem Glyph, Hex Glyph and/or Ghost Wolf Glyph?

As an Ele, how are you maintaining your damage without dispel protection on your Flame Shock? And how do you typically land a kill seeing as you don't have too much in the way of CC, compared to LSD or any other Ele comp?

Oh, a few more questions if you don't mind, Snuggli.

1. Why totemic restoration instead of projection?
2. Why Echo in it's RNGish state instead of EM or AS (which i prefer) as being more reliable. I'm so dependent on having the option to AS+Hex or that I don't know what i'd do without it.
3. Finally, how often, if ever, do you rotate out with Cap Totem Glyph, Hex Glyph and/or Ghost Wolf Glyph?

Thanks!

Regarding the first bit, we've built our game style around it. More often than not both me and the Warrior will be half of the damage of the enemy DPS on the final scoreboard, because (a lot like RPS) we only really push forward and do damage when we're going for kills. Most of the time we're chilling behind pillars killing pets, waiting for fears and shockwaves etc. Against most comps we also start really strong on healers with a fear bomb on DPS so flame shock dispels aren't a huge concern. If a healer does keep on top of flame shock dispels it does hurt me though, we just don't really rely on sustained damage for kills.

1. I got used to playing with it, we normally don't need cap totem for kills because we've got charge / shockwave / chastise. I just love playing with 30s tremor and short grounding / short root totem (warrior doesn't normally DR roots, so normally they are full).

2. The way we play the comp I probably should be specced into EM or AS, you're right, echo is normally better for comps where you're winning on sustained damage, but where we're always swapping around having an NS hex on a DPS or EM for ascendance for burst would be clutch. I should probably change it and get used to playing with it

3. I always run lightning shield glyph. If the enemy team doesn't have a Mage or Paladin I drop Sham Rage for either: Healing Stream (vs dot cleaves), Ghost Wolf (vs melee cleaves) or Hex (vs teams without curse dispel - very rare). If it's a map without a z axis i'll normally drop thunderstorm for something better, although it depends on what classes i'm against (for instance, against feral/warrior thunderstorm glyph is pretty useless because both have so many gap closers).

I wouldn't say I'm experienced at all on Ele Shaman though, so if I'm doing something wrong feel free to call it out :P

Thanks for the response. First of all, I apologize if I derailed the thread with my questions, but I'm hoping this will be as useful for the OP (or his teammates if they are the Ele) as it is for me.

Originally Posted by Snuggli

Regarding the first bit, we've built our game style around it. More often than not both me and the Warrior will be half of the damage of the enemy DPS on the final scoreboard, because (a lot like RPS) we only really push forward and do damage when we're going for kills. Most of the time we're chilling behind pillars killing pets, waiting for fears and shockwaves etc. Against most comps we also start really strong on healers with a fear bomb on DPS so flame shock dispels aren't a huge concern. If a healer does keep on top of flame shock dispels it does hurt me though, we just don't really rely on sustained damage for kills.

I think that's my problem. We need to gel as a team and be in sync. I think either myself or healer over extend too much, or don't make a good call if we need to open hard or not. I do like the idea of the hard open and putting the team on the backfoot.

Originally Posted by Snuggli

1. I got used to playing with it, we normally don't need cap totem for kills because we've got charge / shockwave / chastise. I just love playing with 30s tremor and short grounding / short root totem (warrior doesn't normally DR roots, so normally they are full).

Brain fart. Completely forgot to factor in DR with warr stuns.

Originally Posted by Snuggli

3. I always run lightning shield glyph. If the enemy team doesn't have a Mage or Paladin I drop Sham Rage for either: Healing Stream (vs dot cleaves), Ghost Wolf (vs melee cleaves) or Hex (vs teams without curse dispel - very rare). If it's a map without a z axis i'll normally drop thunderstorm for something better, although it depends on what classes i'm against (for instance, against feral/warrior thunderstorm glyph is pretty useless because both have so many gap closers).

Yeah LS & SR are a given for me because i'm so used to being trained. I've wanted to like the GW glyph but I'm not convinced yet. I feel like i'm getting more mileage on TS glyph vs melee. BUt, you're right. Maybe TS for z-axis maps and GW for rest.

Originally Posted by Snuggli

I wouldn't say I'm experienced at all on Ele Shaman though, so if I'm doing something wrong feel free to call it out :P

Meh, this is all great advice. Besides, funny enough 2 of your three specs are my main (feral) and close second (ele) and you're way way higher on your Ele than I am.

Regarding the first bit, we've built our game style around it. More often than not both me and the Warrior will be half of the damage of the enemy DPS on the final scoreboard, because (a lot like RPS) we only really push forward and do damage when we're going for kills. Most of the time we're chilling behind pillars killing pets, waiting for fears and shockwaves etc. Against most comps we also start really strong on healers with a fear bomb on DPS so flame shock dispels aren't a huge concern. If a healer does keep on top of flame shock dispels it does hurt me though, we just don't really rely on sustained damage for kills.

1. I got used to playing with it, we normally don't need cap totem for kills because we've got charge / shockwave / chastise. I just love playing with 30s tremor and short grounding / short root totem (warrior doesn't normally DR roots, so normally they are full).

2. The way we play the comp I probably should be specced into EM or AS, you're right, echo is normally better for comps where you're winning on sustained damage, but where we're always swapping around having an NS hex on a DPS or EM for ascendance for burst would be clutch. I should probably change it and get used to playing with it

3. I always run lightning shield glyph. If the enemy team doesn't have a Mage or Paladin I drop Sham Rage for either: Healing Stream (vs dot cleaves), Ghost Wolf (vs melee cleaves) or Hex (vs teams without curse dispel - very rare). If it's a map without a z axis i'll normally drop thunderstorm for something better, although it depends on what classes i'm against (for instance, against feral/warrior thunderstorm glyph is pretty useless because both have so many gap closers).

I wouldn't say I'm experienced at all on Ele Shaman though, so if I'm doing something wrong feel free to call it out :P

when i said it wouldn't be fantastic it was because in my head i was thinking you'd have to rely too much on druid cc, fall behind.. and have nothing going after that because your kill windows are so tiny [more against decurse teams ofc].

tbh i'm actually shocked you've gotten over 2200 with this ^^, i don't normally bring up the battle group thing i'm sorta interested so see what you're q'n into. i really don't see my LSD ever losing to something like this unless you were really on :S.

my guess is that you're making a mess of priest teams.. and thats making it easy for you to climb since there's a bajillion hunter / priest / x's over 2200. [edit ..pft.. you said it wasnt good against priest teams.. i have no idea how you're doing it then :/ i would have assumed between purge and rage you could get PS super fast]

when i said it wouldn't be fantastic it was because in my head i was thinking you'd have to rely too much on druid cc, fall behind.. and have nothing going after that because your kill windows are so tiny [more against decurse teams ofc].

tbh i'm actually shocked you've gotten over 2200 with this ^^, i don't normally bring up the battle group thing i'm sorta interested so see what you're q'n into. i really don't see my LSD ever losing to something like this unless you were really on :S.

my guess is that you're making a mess of priest teams.. and thats making it easy for you to climb since there's a bajillion hunter / priest / x's over 2200. [edit ..pft.. you said it wasn't good against priest teams.. i have no idea how you're doing it then :/ i would have assumed between purge and rage you could get PS super fast]

what comps give u trouble / easiest to kill?

We played 50 games or so overall as the comp, by the end our MMR was 2350 with a 80% w/l on our final session (we were around 2.2k mmr when we started and we didn't really get the hang of the comp until later).

Our battlegroup is one of the most competitive BGs on EU after Cyclone and Misery (Stormscale/Outland) cause it's actually the main german BG (even though the server I'm on is English).

We mainly queued into the norm, Ret/Hunter/Priest, LSD, FMP, Junglecleave and a few shadowcleaves and honestly out of all of them LSD was probably the easiest for us. We tried multiple tactics and nearly all of them felt like we were in control of the game.

Against any non-priest team (i don't know why this never worked against priests, maybe spirit shells or just the classes they run with) we would run in, charge>shockwave the healer, AoE warrior/priest fear, drop a psyfiend for the DPS that trinket and start semi-hard on the healer. We wouldn't pop any offensive CDs (maybe on use), but i'd be able to get off a hardcasted ele blast and lava burst while the healer was stunned and the DPS were cc'd. This, plus warrior damage would normally either get a trinket or a major CD like barkskin->battlemaster+might of ursoc or runcast+ascendance. People panicked really bad in this situation and sometimes would go completely overboard on defensive CDs, which is perfect because we never normally killed in the opener (sometimes we did, when people were greedy. One glad druid tried to hold everything apart from barkskin and we flopped him before shockwave ended).

After that, we'd completely pull back (not just a tiny bit), as soon as we started taking any damage we'd be sat behind the pillar with our healer - i'd be purging, offhealing and only really doing damage if lava burst proc'd. Against DPS shaman teams, we'd fear and try and bait tremor. If we got it, it was almost guaranteed we'd win next charge>shockwave and with fear on DPS, because i'd be completely free to pop ascendance and LB spam while my warrior popped banner/reck etc. A healer with 0 outs and that hitting into him is dead 100%.

All in all, it played a lot like RPS/RLS etc where you were just waiting for swaps and healer kills with AoE fears and clean swaps. Outside of us going for a kill, we'd sit at pillar and just joust with the enemy DPS trying to bait the healer into the open or get some damage going on DPS.

Our main problem was Thugcleave. Junglecleave and Ret/Hunt/Priest were also a bit of a ballache. If they trained me, I wouldn't be able to get out any damage at all, and they have so many ways to break CC (as a comp in general) that we'd have to rotate through so much that we'd almost never get a clean swap on the Priest... and heck, playing against such bursty + cc heavy comps it's just a matter of time before you run out of CDs and die in a scatter, especially as Ele. Our main tactic for these was just sit at a pillar, grounding as many traps as possible and try RNG burst the hunter. Luckily about 50% of the time we'd actually manage to pull out a win vs these. Fears would be used on the other DPS (or very rarely the healer) and we'd literally just try and bait the hunter round the pillar long enough to land a shockwave on him and try 100-0 him with a chastise on the priest.

It seemed to work. I'm actually surprised i've never met Thundercleave ever in Arena, not only is it probably mid-tier (not awful but not tier 1) but it's actually really fun to play.

(This post came out longer than I meant it to be, TL/DR; tactics vs certain comps that worked for us. Our synergy as partners is pretty good cause we've been playing together for years now).

With the buff to arms bladestorm and all of the other minor buffs warriors are getting, this comp will probably be good. Your warrior needs to be really good for this comp to work though; he is constantly in danger of being caught and globaled and he brings most of the control that comp has and he spends most of his time peeling.

Warriors are fun. Always loved the potential with their mobility and hopping around and such. Check out this dude on the US servers running WMD, guess you can replace Mage with Ele now -especially around the 1:15 mark, eats that trap like a boss. Excellent team play, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5RaD6DG0og

We played 50 games or so overall as the comp, by the end our MMR was 2350 with a 80% w/l on our final session (we were around 2.2k mmr when we started and we didn't really get the hang of the comp until later).

Our battlegroup is one of the most competitive BGs on EU after Cyclone and Misery (Stormscale/Outland) cause it's actually the main german BG (even though the server I'm on is English).

We mainly queued into the norm, Ret/Hunter/Priest, LSD, FMP, Junglecleave and a few shadowcleaves and honestly out of all of them LSD was probably the easiest for us. We tried multiple tactics and nearly all of them felt like we were in control of the game.

Against any non-priest team (i don't know why this never worked against priests, maybe spirit shells or just the classes they run with) we would run in, charge>shockwave the healer, AoE warrior/priest fear, drop a psyfiend for the DPS that trinket and start semi-hard on the healer. We wouldn't pop any offensive CDs (maybe on use), but i'd be able to get off a hardcasted ele blast and lava burst while the healer was stunned and the DPS were cc'd. This, plus warrior damage would normally either get a trinket or a major CD like barkskin->battlemaster+might of ursoc or runcast+ascendance. People panicked really bad in this situation and sometimes would go completely overboard on defensive CDs, which is perfect because we never normally killed in the opener (sometimes we did, when people were greedy. One glad druid tried to hold everything apart from barkskin and we flopped him before shockwave ended).

After that, we'd completely pull back (not just a tiny bit), as soon as we started taking any damage we'd be sat behind the pillar with our healer - i'd be purging, offhealing and only really doing damage if lava burst proc'd. Against DPS shaman teams, we'd fear and try and bait tremor. If we got it, it was almost guaranteed we'd win next charge>shockwave and with fear on DPS, because i'd be completely free to pop ascendance and LB spam while my warrior popped banner/reck etc. A healer with 0 outs and that hitting into him is dead 100%.

All in all, it played a lot like RPS/RLS etc where you were just waiting for swaps and healer kills with AoE fears and clean swaps. Outside of us going for a kill, we'd sit at pillar and just joust with the enemy DPS trying to bait the healer into the open or get some damage going on DPS.

Our main problem was Thugcleave. Junglecleave and Ret/Hunt/Priest were also a bit of a ballache. If they trained me, I wouldn't be able to get out any damage at all, and they have so many ways to break CC (as a comp in general) that we'd have to rotate through so much that we'd almost never get a clean swap on the Priest... and heck, playing against such bursty + cc heavy comps it's just a matter of time before you run out of CDs and die in a scatter, especially as Ele. Our main tactic for these was just sit at a pillar, grounding as many traps as possible and try RNG burst the hunter. Luckily about 50% of the time we'd actually manage to pull out a win vs these. Fears would be used on the other DPS (or very rarely the healer) and we'd literally just try and bait the hunter round the pillar long enough to land a shockwave on him and try 100-0 him with a chastise on the priest.

It seemed to work. I'm actually surprised i've never met Thundercleave ever in Arena, not only is it probably mid-tier (not awful but not tier 1) but it's actually really fun to play.

(This post came out longer than I meant it to be, TL/DR; tactics vs certain comps that worked for us. Our synergy as partners is pretty good cause we've been playing together for years now).

yea i guess i could that being a problem if you backed out completely against LSD after actually getting someting, but the opener would only be nasty if they let you..i would be annoyed if what you described worked on us because it really shouldn't :s, alot in there that can be avoided just by paying attention - if you dont get trinks defensives there i don't think you can win really. you must be doing something right ^.^

anyways sounds like you're having fun with it - i dont think most people would be doing as well with that tbh.